Evolution of the Social Contract - Softcover

Skyrms, Brian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1107434289 ISBN 13: 9781107434288

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2014

Synopsis

This new edition further develops the application of evolutionary game theory to an analysis of the origins of social contracts.

About this title

About the Author

Brian Skyrms is Distinguished Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and of Economics at the University of California, Irvine and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, California. His publications include The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure (Cambridge, 2004), Signals: Evolution, Learning, and Information (2010), From Zeno to Arbitrage: Essays on Quantity, Coherence, and Induction (2012) and Evolution of the Social Contract (Cambridge, 1996), which won the 1999 Lakatos Award in Philosophy of Science.

From the Back Cover

In this pithy and highly readable book, Brian Skyrms, a recognized authority on game theory and decision theory, investigates traditional problems of the social contract in terms of evolutionary dynamics. Game theory is skillfully employed to offer quite new interpretations of a wide variety of social phenomena, including justice, mutual aid, commitment, convention, and meaning. The author eschews any grand, unified theory. Rather, he presents the reader with tools drawn from evolutionary game theory for the purpose of analyzing and coming to understand the social contract. The book is not technical and requires no special background knowledge. As such, it could be enjoyed by students and professionals in a wide range of disciplines: political science, philosophy, decision theory, economics and biology.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1107434289
• ISBN 13: 9781107434288
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 166